Jewel has helped create a new platform to provide support around mental health.
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The singer has been announced as the co-founder and chief strategy officer for Innerworld, a digital mental health platform. According to a press release, Innerworld is “the largest community in the metaverse for mental health support.”
The platform offers peer-to-peer support groups in the virtual world where users are able to interact as avatars, along with 100 weekly events. Jewel is leading a series of events, including how to use anxiety as an ally and teaching a course on the topic of emotional dyslexia and how she’s personally overcome emotional challenges. Other classes focus on living with a chronic disability or illness, introduction to silent meditation, dealing with grief and much more.
Jewel faced a series of struggles during her youth, including growing up in an abusive household and experiencing homelessness when she was 18, turning to meditation later in life to help her heal.
“When I found Innerworld, I knew it was an incredible solution to our mental health crisis,” Jewel says in a press statement. “We must turn to safe, affordable, scalable and proven tools to help everyone who needs it. The time for talking about the problem is over–we need solutions. That’s why I am a proud Co-Founder of Innerworld.”
The concept was created by founder and CEO Noah Robinson based on his experience as a teenager struggling to come out as gay, which led him to depression and anxiety. “What did help was an anonymous, online game where I became an avatar,” Robinson explains in the release. “This game was designed for me to escape, and I spent my teenage years avoiding reality. But I also found a community and eventually came out to them. The acceptance I experienced empowered me to come out in the real world, and I wondered if we could build a virtual world that was designed to help people with their mental health issues from the start.”
Innerworld is an app that is compatible with PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone and Meta Quest.
Photo Credit: Brendan Walter/Courtesy of Shore Fire Media
